Shio: Otherworldly Lights Made From Pure Salt

What began as a Kickstarter dream last month is now a design reality for Daniel MacDonald, a Seattle-based scientist who invented Shio, a line of lighted mineral sculptures based on his adventures at Yellowstone as a child.

Shio, the Japanese word for salt, takes its otherwordly form from a process of pouring purified salt into custom growth chambers and allowing it to crystallize into different "species," as MacDonald calls it.

Each mineral sculpture takes about a week to fully form into a mature Shio light. MacDonald classifies his pieces as species, which take on well-formed rounded shapes, or mutants, which take on a life of their own in the growing cycle.

Read more about the Kickstarter campaign, and keep checking back for when Studio Shio will make these lights available to the public.

A modern homesteader and garden foodie, Linda is the voice behind the award-winning blog Garden Betty, which chronicles her adventures in the dirt and on the road. Her first book, The CSA Cookbook, was released in March 2015 by Voyageur Press.